Uakix.com has asked me to share with its readers ways in which we can work on our inner patterns of money and abundance. We can start by looking at how to clean our negative beliefs on money so we can unblock their energy.

The whole of our inner system has been designed to keep learning and evolving throughout our lifetime. Each time we face an issue and find a satisfactory solution for it we are establishing a pattern in our brain and by repeating it, it will become a habit.

With time those patterns will become automatic, they will form part of the unconscious and we will reproduce them almost without noticing. It is that unconsciousness –when negative- that stops us from believing, from evolving, that makes us feel prisoners of our own limiting beliefs, emotions and actions..

If we want our universe to change in some way we must change those inner thought, emotional and behaviour patterns which are causing our physical and material manifestation.

When we talk of abundance or the lack of it we should start from a premise which is equal for all of us: when we do not have the abundance we wish to have it is because there is a part of ourselves that does not want or know how to create it or have it. There is always a reason why we experience our lives the way we do and the clue for change is finding such reasons.

The first thing we must realise is that we are not one single person, that our system is made up of many inner characters who think, feel and act inside us, different parts who may or may not agree among themselves, who can hinder and sabotage, or help and support each other.

If you have constant problems with money, you should understand that it can be due to a conscious or unconscious decision of one of your inner patterns, you have accepted to believe in your negative circumstances, in the impossibility of changing them, and have become their victim.

Once you know that, you can change such decision as soon as you identify it, you can change your adverse circumstances and create abundance for yourself on a sound basis.

There can be a part of yourself that wants abundance and another that may be blocking it for different reasons such as family patterns, wrong beliefs, unconscious fears or blocks. At my website http://autoevolucion.com/ you will find many ways of dismantling a bad pattern, one of them could be going through negative beliefs on a given matter in order to eliminate blocks. Let us take for example the money pattern .

Take pencil and paper and write down anything that you feel concerns you:

Any belief we assume as certain (whether it is true or not) will be what we manifest in the material plane. If your truth is that you are not capable of creating abundance, keeping it, managing it or protecting it, your decisions or lack of decisions will not let you generate it.

Re-write your beliefs: Work on the idea that you are capable of generating abundance, that it is easy for you, that you learn to manage it and care for it, and your mind will lead you to the best decisions to make such ideas true, you will feel inclined to study, prepare yourself, seek ideas.

Do you believe yourself capable of generating abundance or not?

Any negative belief on what we wish will move it away from us, and any positive belief will bring it closer to us.

If you believe that money is “bad” because it makes people selfish or insensitive, because you know people who have been corrupted by it, or behaved unfairly, or any other negative association, you will sabotage yourself so that you do not become any of those negative things, it will not allow your creative mind to develop giving you the necessary intuitions which would lead you to earn money.

Re-write these beliefs: Try to believe that abundance is good because it makes you a better, more selfless person, because it helps you to prepare yourself for life, to develop projects that will help to make a better world, to help people, to grow and develop as an individual, and your mind will start to produce ideas on how to create it.

Do you have negative ideas about money?

If you love something you will develop your capacity of attracting it, fear and doubt will block it away from you. If you are afraid of money, of responsibility, if you doubt whether you will be able to manage your abundance, it will stay away from you, you will sabotage it, you will block it.

If you love money, if you learn to manage it, to administer it, if you feel confident about it, nothing will stop your creative mind from developing ways of making it real in your life.

Do you love money or are you afraid of it?

If you hate, envy or think badly of wealthy or successful people, it can block your wish to do well in life in order to avoid precisely being envied, or hated or criticized. If you stop feeling that way about wealthy and successful people you will not block your capacities and you will not fear being rejected.

If you look for a positive model, or for positive aspects of some wealthy person you can admire, you may learn from him or her and avoid blocking those qualities in you.

What do you think of wealthy people? Work on your own answers.

You will never develop creative models to generate abundance, or you will lose it very easily, if being wealthy goes against your moral, religious or family beliefs, or it brings out the worst part of you or in any way puts your present relations at risk. I mean beliefs such as ‘the poor are better people’, or ‘it is them that will go to Heaven’, or ‘ if I do too well I will lose my family and friends’, or ‘opportunists will take advantage of me’, or ‘how will I know who loves me for my money and material success or for myself’ … If you think that in order to make money you will have to ‘lose your soul’, betray your highest ideals, abuse others, excuse yourself for the negative means you have used … you will lose it just as you got it, or guilt and shame will not allow you to enjoy it. Make sure you are up to your own moral standards or peace shall not rule your realm, no matter how brilliant it may appear. All such beliefs are establishing that you are not capable of managing your ‘wealthy’ pattern, that you will not be able to admit or handle that situation.

Re-write your script: try to think that money makes you a better person, that it brings out the best of you, that it helps you grow spiritually and to improve your relationships, to act according to your ideals and help others. Think that you will learn to have money, to tell who loves you for what you really are, that you will improve your pattern with practice and that it will make you very happy.

Do you think that your moral or religious beliefs, your relationships with your family or friends would be at risk if you were a wealthy person? Work on your answers.

Identify incompatible beliefs in your inner patterns: for instance, wishing for abundance is incompatible with victimism, you must learn RESPONSIBILITY. You have caused your present situation and you can create again for yourself whatever experience you want to live. Being wealthy is not compatible with laziness, lack of interest or sound ambition, nor with apathy or lack of creativity and self-esteem.

Your new target: If you want your experience of abundance to be a positive one, learn to handle it and manage it wisely, look for the best ways of investing it, of using it for good causes, to help yourself and others, to support your life mission.

To what extent is your present Self inconsistent with the Self you want to be? Work on your own answers.

If you find excuses for your limitations you will certainly have them. If you think it is better to have just enough to live on and not have to face any of the situations described above, or have to make yourself responsible of new situations which you are not sure you will overcome successfully, that is precisely how it will be.

Your new target demands that you take responsibility for your own life, for your acts, for your determination to make a better version of yourself. Only you can make of yourself what you want to be. Make yourself the ultimate responsible of your physical experience.

Remember, if you work on the premise that YOU ARE THE ULTIMATE RESPONSIBLE AND CAUSE OF EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOU, OR THAT YOU ALLOW TO HAPPEN TO YOU, your Higher Self will awake inside you and will lead you to be the responsible co-creator of your existence on this material plane.

If you want abundance and money, you will have to reconsider every single negative belief about yourself, about what others think of you, and about the money you may have.

Take pencil and paper and start to dig into your patterns, turn over all those beliefs, imagine your ideal ‘wealthy’ pattern, turn into it, incarnate it. Make sure you are the best wealthy person you can be, watch yourself, don’t justify yourself in shortage, don’t speak badly of money, nor or yourself in respect of money. Money is innocent, it is what we do with it that makes the difference, and that difference is inside you, in nobody else, in your beliefs and attitudes.

In conclusion: take a few days to complete this exercise and write down in your notebook:

1.- Your thoughts about money, both positive and negative. Make two columns, leave the positive ones as they are, take the negative ones, turn them round and add them to the positive ones. Don’t leave any negative ideas in your belief, remember that money in itself is neither good nor bad, it is the use we make of it and the conscience of those who use it that give it its value.

2.- Your thoughts about yourself in relation to money: Can you earn it? Do you know how to administer it? Do you waste it or do you take care of it? Does it degrade you or does it uplift you spiritually? What can you do in order to get better results?

3.-Your thoughts about others concerning money: do you respect, or envy the wealthy, or do you try to learn the good things you see in them? Remember that if you have negative thoughts towards the wealthy your system will stop you from being one of them in order to avoid your negative thoughts about others. Try to admire what is good in what you are seeking, ignore what is negative and incorporate the ideal you set for yourself. Remember that you are you and that you decide what you want to be at each moment.

4.- What idea is your present pattern based on? Which would be the ideal one? If for instance your idea now is ‘I have just enough money to live on and that is limiting me’, you can work on the ideal ‘I find the way to create unlimited wealth’. Or if your idea now is ‘I hate to be dependant on money’, you can work on ‘I love everything that money can give me, it makes me independent’ … look for different ways of thinking and build new and more positive beliefs, visualize yourself in your new pattern.

5.- Which is your ideal pattern? What would an ideal “wealthy” person be like for you? Describe it in detail because you are going to incorporate what you are looking for in order to attract the circumstances and opportunities that will make it appear in your life.

6.- Build the new pattern. Imagine you already have the economic situation you want for yourself. How do you think you would be? How would you think, feel, do things? Describe it, imagine it, feel it, watch out for any fear, doubt or negative thought, work on it, turn it round, re-build it. When you have and ideal you identify with, silence yourself and send it to your Higher Self, wait for the answers and listen to your intuitions, investigate them, get them started … consider that you will have to find the way to reach your target and create the plan that will lead you to the experience that you seek for yourself.

One last thought:

Working on your inner patterns the way we have described above does not mean that abundance and wealth will appear in your life as if by magic, it means that

– by getting rid of your negative ideas on abundance you will smooth the way to it,

– you will definitely change your relationship with it and flow better with its energy,

– you will establish a sound basis for your next step, draw a plan to build a future of wealth for yourself, free of old conditionings.

The word “empathy” comes from a Greek term that means “to feel in” or “to feel inside” oneself, as one’s own, the emotional reality of others: a quality that is a blessing for the soul. Empathy is the capacity of standing in the other people’s shoes, of feeling, understanding, perceiving, accepting and sharing feelings and emotions with others; it is emotional intelligence in action. As with all things, this quality needs to be balanced, lack of empathy will cut us off from our surroundings, an excess of it can thin out the diffuse line that separates our emotional life from that of others to the point of losing our own identity …

Someone without empathy can be a threat for society and for himself, because he can’t feel others he may wound or ill-treat them without turning a hair. Because they can’t perceive the suffering of others, those who lack empathy are actual emotional illiterates incapable of understanding or taking pity of their fellow men, even less so of creating harmony in a group.

Excess of empathy can also be harmful if we reach the point where we become insensitive to our own needs and emotions to the benefit of others; it is generosity misunderstood, a personal sacrifice that can lead us to the loss of our own identity or to become victims of manipulation. Those who have excess of empathy are no longer in contact with their own reality and no longer know if what they feel is their own emotion or somebody else’s. They can sacrifice themselves for others to their own prejudice, putting themselves at risk or even leading to self-destruction. Excess of empathy can be love of mankind misunderstood resulting in self-inflicted violence or self-denial.

Empathy is an important skill for the emotional and sensitive knowledge of our milieu providing us with information that enables us to make the best decisions for common good, including the capacity of blocking out non-empathic individuals who are not aware of the violence they exercise. Empathy and the information it gives us enable us to make other people happy, to help them or heal them if that is what they need, to protect the innocent from the destructiveness of the non-empathic.

In my opinion, empathy is of vital importance because it gives us the right measure of our feelings when understanding, helping, improving, enjoying, sharing or standing by others, it helps us protect our own emotional life without letting ourselves being run over to the extent of missing our own course.

Speaking of negative emotions, during many years I have seen in my classes people whose excess of empathy made them block themselves out as the only means to avoid the suffering resulting from other people’s pain. They were so caught up in other people’s suffering that they became unable to help or understand others and at the same time were totally incapable of understanding or helping themselves. By cutting off their feelings to avoid suffering, they stopped feeling themselves; they tried to live and understand life only through their minds and finally reached a point where their emotional life shrank to the extent that they couldn’t make emotionally and intellectually balanced decisions any more.

If we make decisions based on ideas that seem all right and reasonable but we don’t take into consideration how they make us feel, we’re heading for failure in the long run. When we have an idea and we are well tuned with our emotions, these will give us the right feeling about the experiences that the idea will bring about for us when it is implemented. Without such emotional information we may put in practice ideas that attempt on our feelings, ideals and longings and in the end on our soul. We’re all familiar with the “this is what I wanted, now I’ve got it and still I’m not happy” sort of feeling, the typical result of a decision made with head but not tested with the heart.

Pain is an emotional sign that should be overcome and not blocked off; otherwise we risk it becoming a chronic condition generating not only much suffering but many negative patterns that will limit our personality. Instead of living a creative life that is the source of positive experiences and happiness, the “sufferer” spends his life seeking to avoid suffering, stops loving life and all he does is oppose it or protect himself against it.

The solution is not to block oneself off but rather to learn to handle our emotions allowing ourselves to feel them, letting them offer us their message, essential for the making of decisions that will bring us benefits and happiness instead of destruction and suffering. If we don’t pay attention to our emotions in our daily decision-making, we may end up immersed in the very suffering that we are trying to avoid.

The other case is positive empathy. Feeling the love, the enthusiasm and the joy of the other person may fill us with positive emotions, of vital importance if we try to re-create them in our own lives too. Many receive this sort of emotions, they “consume” them and enjoy them, but they do nothing creative with them. If something positive moves you, make the most of the gift that somebody else created for you and move in that direction, generate more energy and be an inspiration for those who in their turn seek to live on and learn to generate positive energy. Seek to provide your example and creativity for others, just as somebody else did for you. Give back to the World the blessings that the World provided for you and everything will rest in balance.

Somebody was asking the other day why consistency is so important, and I considered the issue deserves some reflection. Consistency is the basis of authority, of the straight, rightful path. Inconsistency invalidates our own convictions, destroys any basis for authority over ourselves or over others, disqualifies us as examples or models to be followed. Because it can’t be confirmed by personal behaviour, an inconsistent opinion lacks the necessary value or moral authority to be taken in consideration.

We become what we defend, if we defend foolishness we’ll end up as fools. Therefore, whoever defends a fool is attacking the wise man and wisdom because, as a wise man once said, “we cannot serve two masters”.

This is typical when in the absence of arguments to defend something we resort to the “the best defence is an attack” attitude, in most cases an indiscriminate attack. But such attitude only shows that there are no arguments or authority to base the defence on and that we should admit our mistake and change our opinion … something quite natural and normal for an educated ego, but difficult for an un-educated one.

But not only that, by defending a thief or a fool we may be trying to justify our own tendencies to theft or foolishness and if we are understanding and tolerant with a crime we are being accomplices to it, allowing our “inner criminal” to let his destructive instincts run free.

All of which implies an inexorable danger in the Law of Attraction: whoever defends evil, ignorance or crime will be in the future a victim of evil and the wicked, of ignorance and the ignorant, of crime and criminals. A daring attitude, defending evil in this Universe, as in the long run we are always subject to its implacable Laws.

The only way of escaping a negative Law of Attraction is to remain as faithful SEEKERS OF GOOD based on a sound CONSISTENCY.

As an exception, we could say that inconsistency is only “excusable” when it is the result of ignorance or is based on good intention. But still, as in the principle of justice, ignorance of the Law does not exempt from compliance, even more so in the case of the Law of Attraction. So all we can do is to be aware of the Laws of the Universe and try to follow them because in the long run they will keep our souls in the Light, away from darkness. Nobody said it was an easy task, and yet it is the most important challenge mankind has to face if it wishes to continue enjoying life on this Planet.

How difficult it is sometimes to be consistent with our criticisms. Everybody is aware that in Spain criticism is a national sport and because it is usually destructive, it has become a blight to our culture. In principle there’s nothing wrong with issuing a judgement, if somebody criticizes something it is because he believes he has better reasons than whatever or whoever he is criticising, he feels he has some information, experience or data that enable him to judge. So far, so good.

But judgements stop being positive if the person who criticizes does not take note of his own criticism, if he is not consistent with what he is saying by applying it to himself. Consistency is a truly difficult art, it takes us a lifetime to overcome our own contradictions, we all have to face them every day and not admitting this fact is mere self-deception.

Some people choose not to criticize, but then they’re missing a chance to learn about themselves, to discover their own projection in their judgement. Judging something and finding out which part of our own life is in a similar situation and has the same behaviour pattern, is one of the soundest practices for personal development.

Let’s take a few examples to show the “take note of what you’re saying” attitude. For instance, those who say that others are doing nothing to solve some problem and do nothing in their turn to solve their own; or those who criticize abuse when they are abusing themselves or others; people who curse power but abuse it when they have a chance to do so; those who sit comfortably back and attack what others are doing, unable to overcome their own laziness or apathy. People use justification to defend their own behaviour,so you can justify your own faults but not other people’s? Again, lack of consistency.

Thosewho criticize but don’t apply to themselves what they’re saying, do they have the right to criticize? In my opinion only consistency gives us the right to criticize, and even then it should be used constructively. This is not always possible, especially when the person who abuses has no intention to amend his ways, but there are usually constructive alternatives which we don’t see because of our projections. Finding out about them and working on the constructive version of what we’re criticising is a truly valuable art.

The borderline between “right” and “wrong” has many aspects to be considered. If there isn’t a sound basis for judgements everything is justifiable, even the absence of judgement, and not applying good judgement is a major disaster for a rational mind. We always do things on the grounds of reasons we justify, if we stop judging our own reasons to act we become irrational beings with an unlimited destructive potential. Examining our conscience is a sound mental and emotional practice, essential to any human being who seeks to be the best possible version of himself and not just a pale reflection of what he could be.

According to this point of view, of course we should judge! Always followed by a reflection on our own behavioural patterns, considering in which part of our lives we are doing the same thing that we are criticizing, taking note of what we say and taking action in order to change what surrounds us. Or, in other words, change our inner world so we can learn to change the outer world towards a true, consistent excellence. If we don’t do something to change things, if don’t use constructive criticism, what we’re exercising is the cowardice of not being able to judge ourselves in our faults and amend ourselves.

Criticism is destructive if it is not accompanied by the will to act in consequence. But it is indispensable and constructive if it is done with the intention to improve oneself and improve things, our surroundings, society, the planet. The sky is the limit for those who use good judgement creatively in their own benefit and in the benefit of others.

Nowadays everybody has an opinion on everything and everybody. “Opinologists” fill the media and pervade social life, demanding equal respect for all opinions because the established rule is that all opinions are worthy of respect. But is it really so? Are all opinions equally worthy?

At a dinner party a few weeks ago one of the guests insisted that one learns as much from pupils as from teachers. She said for example that a child’s experience was equally respectable as that of a grown-up. But it is obvious that in certain things it is preferable to learn from the experience of a teacher than from a five year old. That doesn’t mean a child can’t teach things such as innocence or its infinite curiosity to those who have lost it with years, but a child can’t teach much from life experience yet. Don’t you think?

The question is, who should we pay attention to, who should inspire us when we have to make a decision? Should we respect the opinions of those who are experienced in whatever we want to advance, or are all opinions equally valid and respectable? I’m afraid not, if we make a decision based on an opinion that is groundless, false or biased, we’ll be in for trouble in the long term.

If I want to know about football, Cristiano Ronaldo’s opinion on the matter is surely more valuable and respectable than that of my local baker, but if I want a good pizza crust my baker’s recipe will surely outclass Ronaldo’s. Experience can’t be ignored when we choose a role model.

What if we want to improve the world? Which would be the best opinion? Surely that of those who seek to improve it, never that of those who want to perpetuate the mistakes that keep unbalanced. The measure of any opinion is in its aim. The higher the aim, the better we shall distinguish truth from falsehood, wisdom fromignorance, light from darkness.

An opinion is worthless if it is not based on sound, valuable grounds such as a true fact, research, a sustained and supported experience whether material or spiritual, an observation, a sound knowledge of the matter, a well defined feeling; if we respect all opinions equally when they are not all equally based on the same level of veracity, experience, or study, we are reducing truth to the level of ignorance, deceit and justification. When we give an opinion based on incomplete or false information, often manipulated by the media, by vested interests or by third parties also ignorant of the matter, also subject to incomplete or biased information, we are at risk of defending, and therefore attracting, what we sustain with such determination. What if it isn’t the whole truth? Or if it is false, negative, dangerous or deceitful information? What are the consequences of not verifying the information, as far as we can, received from the outside?

Ignorance of the law does not exempt from compliance. Likewise, the ignorance of the Laws of the Universe does not prevent the negative consequences of a wrong choice . What we can do is verify, question, investigate, check, make sure that the information we use is the best possible before we make any decision that could be decisive for our future.

What happens when a young person accepts something as truthful that is false and it becomes a pattern for him as in the case of drug addiction, or the justification of violence? Does he realize the time it will take him to experience the lie and recover his previous condition? It will take years of his life, and in the meantime he will have destroyed the best part of it. It is impossible to overrate the importance of exercising good judgement from early stages –something difficult to achieve in our society-, as anybody can pretend to educate, inspire, and manipulate from any media where the prevailing idea is that all opinions are equally respectable. What if those ideas attempt against other people’s rights, or against the rights of Life or of Nature? Where does justice lie? Who decides what is fair?

It is true that life eventually puts everybody and everything in its place because the truths that rule the Universe sooner or later outweigh lies and inaccuracies, and in the long run they manifest themselves as they are. But it is equally true that in the meantime the mistakes made by creating a world based on false, ignorant or biased opinions and information can be extremely harmful.

A young person experiencing the world for the first time, testing the limits of the human body, sometimes forces it into habits or addictions which he may consider good but are actually harmful. They only respond to pleasure, but not to the general wellbeing, respect for life, respect for others and for himself … By the time he realizes it, he may have destroyed his health or his neurons forever.

An addict for example, may argue that his addiction is good for something, like saying that drinking facilitates social interaction. It may be true in the short term as it makes people more talkative, but after a while it makes you lose conscience and control over any situation and over yourself, as well as attempting against your body and your health. Sometimes the opinion of the person suffering the experience is the worst of all.

The valuable opinion of an addict will be the one given after quitting his addiction, before that his opinions cannot be taken into account because he will be dragging others to the bottom of his pit.

Ignorant people pretend that their opinions have the same worth as those who aren’t, but it shouldn’t be that way. And I am referring to people who are ignorant in a particular matter: I know from experience that everybody knows something and that everybody can give an opinion on that which they know, but on matters they don’t know about it is better not to try and influence with their opinion as they can spread evil and lies, even with the best of intentions.

To respect the opinion of an ignorant person is to reject the opinion of the wise man that would lead us to good, and that is not advisable.

To respect the opinion of the wise man is to reject the opinion of the ignorant person, and that is fine.

So the question is to make sure we can tell the wise man from the ignorant person and to learn the truth from the best of the two, even when the wise man may be ignorant in some matters and the ignorant may be learned in others. The valuable opinion is that of the person who knows of the matter in hand and who also has an overall vision that helps him reach accurate conclusions, as all matters usually have others related to them. To follow those unable to admit their ignorance in a certain matter is the first step to failure. Respect has to be won.

B.P: Good … I would like to look a little further into the meaning of dreams. I’m sure everybody believes by now that they have some purpose, that they are at least messages from our unconscious … I think we already know or imagine something like that …but I would like to go a little further … my question is, why do you think it is important to work with our dreams?

B.C.: Our mind is the great unknown. We know in fact that it’s tool, our brain, is only used to a five or ten percent of its capacity.

Compared to our conscious mind, the unconscious mind has a huge capacity to assess our surroundings and store information, which means we overlook more than 90 percent of the information we are exposed to. Easy to say, but that’s how it is.

All this information is not lost, it is stored and it only comes out in certain cases, for instance through our intuition when we are awake and, of course, through our dreams while we sleep. The conscious mind does not control any of these two processes unless it has been trained to do so. The first question is obvious, which part of ourselves is in charge of our unconscious processes? It is what I call the Higher Self …

In the case of our intuition, the unconscious mind receives the information, it assesses and processes it and sends to the conscious mind an emotional signal or a perfect idea for that moment, and the conscious mind won’t have a clue as to how this idea or feeling has come about. A well-trained ego should accept and test the efficiency of the intuition carrying out the idea, it should keep such processes open and keep training itself; otherwise intuition will dim and fade out. What is not exercised, is lost.

As well as assessing the thoughts, emotions and actions of our wakeful life, dreams also serve the purpose of bringing out and making conscious all that information which the mind captured unconsciously and which we need in order to make the right decisions for our own benefit and that of our environment.

While we are awake we use our rational mind much more, we are determined by our learnt and established patterns, and it is these patterns that prevent us sometimes from seeing reality, they filter the information and they make us see the world the way we are, and not the way it is. That is why two different people can have two different views of the same event, depending on the filter they have used to interpret it. All these patterns that constitute our personality are what we call ego, the part of us with which we identify ourselves.

What dreams can give us is the point of view of our Higher Self which dwells in our unconscious, the One that DOES HAVE access to the stored information. During our sleep the conscious mind cannot interfere in the mental processes of the unconscious. If we learn to decipher its language, which is symbolic, and we make conscious all that material, we will receive the information with such richness of nuances that it will help us make the right decisions, flow with the Universe, understand its signs and access experiences that would otherwise be banned from us because we cannot access the necessary information. We can’t fool ourselves in dreams, what we see in them is what there is, the reflection of our inner patterns.

Through dreams we can access our soul, the great unknown, we can get to know ourselves better, our forgotten capacities, the mission our soul set itself before it arrived, the gifts we can offer the world, or the tools we can use to learn how to make ourselves and others happy. That is the great purpose of dreams: they offer us access to our totality.

B.P.: Fascinating … and how do we reach that information?

B.C: When we want to talk to somebody in real life we simply call him -intention, action and reaction- and the person answers. It’s the same with our unconscious, we have to “call” it somehow and “ask” it for the information we want. In the old days they called this “incubating a dream”. They went up to the temple of the god relevant to their question and they channelled the answers in their dreams. The exercise I propose is simpler and it has to do with thinking that we have that Higher Self that knows what we need and will provide us with it through our dreams and the signs in everyday life.

The first time I tried asking in this way I did it just to try, I never thought I would get an answer. I imagined a decision I had to make the next day, I visualized what I had to do, I sent the question to my unconscious just before I went to sleep and visualized how I would wake up the next morning with the right answer, the ideal decision for me to make at that moment.

The result was a totally different point of view. In fact, the dream led me to think that the person in whom I had placed all my trust was not exactly trustworthy … So the next day I started to make enquiries to see if my dream had given me the right information. It took me two days to learn that this person usually didn’t keep his promises because of his lack of self-confidence. My mind had probably registered certain nuances in his voice, in his body language, things he said that showed a negative pattern, signs that were clear for my inner Self but had passed unnoticed to me at the time. It was like having a wise assistant registering everything I didn’t get.

I’ve been making my decisions this way for years and teaching my students how to do it, and the truth is that intuition can develop to an incredible extent. Both dreams and signs in everyday life appear like lighthouses in the fog, showing us the way and helping us to flow. Doing things this way increases synchronicity exponentially. The interpretation of those signs is the task we should undertake and work at in order to reach a conclusion efficiently for the ideal decision for our soul. A positive side-effect I found in working with my Higher Self was that by paying attention through my dreams to the formation of those signs that I couldn’t capture at first sight before, I became increasingly aware of them and received them faster and better. People who learn these techniques increase their self-confidence in their decisions.

B.P.: Good … we’ll have to “incubate” more often ..but what’s the connection between dreams and the signs in “real” life?

B.C.: They are both projections of our unconscious mind. You think something, and whether your are conscious of it or not, you attract and feel attracted by the people, situations and matter that ratify your thoughts. You live your projection and after you see the effect it causes you have two options, either you change and improve the idea, which leads you to a new experience, or you continue with it and you re-live the same experience again and again. That’s the cycle, that’s how it works. If you have positive thoughts you cause good effects and you live good experiences. If they are negative you live bad experiences.

People who don’t change live the same effects of their causes over and over , which can be positive or negative. If it is a negative or unbalanced person the projections will be negative, unpleasant experiences in real life, pain, doubts, fear and uncertainty. In dreams, such projections are images that cause uneasiness, they show negative ideas of ourselves, of others and of life so that we may see the contents of our mind and work on them. In real life such patterns become negative projections, unpleasant experiences that we don’t know how to change … For instance, someone who keeps stumbling again and again. It is a negative projection: he lives over and over the idea that he is clumsy. That doesn’t mean that he is clumsy, it means that he thinks he’s clumsy and his body obeys him, which is quite different.

These negative projections of our mind are not what I call signs of the Universe, although they can be considered calls, warnings that we are not acting in accordance with the Laws of Nature. What I call signs have to do with knowledge dreams, when projections are not negative but positive and they show us the way to follow, some direction or help. It happens when we incubate, when we ask our unconscious mind (which answers with dreams) or the Universe (which answers with signs) to guide us, to send us a sign of what we need at this moment, to enlighten us.

Let me give you an example. If I go to the theatre and I decide in advance that I want to take a taxi I will only see taxis when I go out, my mind will be looking for green lights and will focus only on green lights in motion. But if when I go out I decide that I will find the best way to get to the theatre my mind will not be so busy looking for taxis, it will be open to other possibilities and it can make me see that there is a traffic jam, that cars are stuck, that there is some event, a football match maybe, or it is Saturday evening, and it suggests I use the underground even if it means changing my shoes to walk more comfortably …

I may even notice that a neighbor is coming out of his house at that moment and is going in the same direction, or an idea suddenly occurs to me a couple of hours earlier to make sure I arrive on time. It may seem silly, but the fixed idea of going in a taxi will concentrate my thoughts only on that, I have not specified that I want to arrive on time. A firm but open intention will make me more flexible and creative.

The decision of finding the best way of getting there includes the happy end, it allows my mind to open its scope and receive more information, it will surely deliver ideas that confirm that pattern and synchronicity will help me get what I want. It is what I call having a clear intention and at the same time letting the Universe guide you to the option that is best at that moment, which may not be the same one the next day nor be the one you had imagined to begin with. There’s a saying about this, “man proposes, God disposes”.Working on signs is making sure that God is on your side and is helping you in your proposal, that you do all you can but in the end it turns out his way, simply because you don’t have all the information and the Universe does.

Many people don’t understand why it so hard to make changes, and in most cases it is because they have closed, established patterns of thought, feeling and action that they keep repeating, when the ideal is to have an established basis of values and the capacity to adapt oneself to circumstances without losing the original light of the highest objective. Dreams and projections show us things as they are so that we can work on them and turn them into the cause of the effect we wish.

Working with dreams and signs in everyday life brings us closer to the true aim of our soul, and helps us educate our ego so that it may serve our soul and not the other way round. B.P.: Wow! Working on our dreams and signs does sound interesting … So dreams and signs are messages from our unconscious –which actually seems more conscious than what we call the conscious mind .. . But are there other messages we can receive in our dreams and/or perhaps by means of signs too? Could they be messages from higher beings? Is it possible to reach these beings by such means?

B.C.: Yes, I believe it is possible. But I must also say that some of them are probably not dreams as such, but experiences in the astral plane. Without going into much detail, such experiences can be remembered as dreams or experienced as astral trips, depending on how much conscience the dreamer can carry to the astral plane.

In the second case the experience is an entirely different one, it is not remembered as a dream but as an actual trip … The difference is something like watching a film where we see images (dream) or actually take part in it immersed in the set (trip), not forgetting that the astral is not a dense plane and it is not ruled by the same laws and the physical plane. This type of experiences tend to produce a series of sensations that are intense by nature and difficult to describe, they don’t feel at all like a normal dream, nor do the messages.

B.P.: Just one more thing, is there an intelligence in the unconscious? What I mean is, depending on the emotional, social etc. intelligence of the dreamer, he/she will store the information in the unconscious differently … am I right?

B. C.: The unconscious we are talking about generates mental processes and the subsequent automatic impulses based on memories, past experiences, education, and there is a subconscious mind that makes decisions and acts almost instinctively based on such programming. That is why it is so important to know what there is recorded in the unconscious, what it is that moves us to act, because what we call an instinctive response is only a response to a reason or emotion programmed in the unconscious, something learnt.

Much of that programming is false, wrong or outdated, but it still rules our acts simply because being programmed from the unconscious it drives us to act automatically. Once an attitude or response to an event did us good we record it that way, but that supposed good in the short term can turn dangerous in the long term (such is the case with addictions), or the circumstances and the people involved may have changed, but our unconscious will tend to respond always in the same way in order to solve the same situation or similar ones. It is extremely difficult for the unconscious mind to change an impulse unless it finds a better reason to do so, or some strong emotional experience that contradicts and reprograms what it has programmed. That is why it is so difficult in most cases to change habits. It will be necessary to find the reason why the unconscious recorded that impulse and then reprogram it. I teach my students to find their existing programming first so that they may change things in accordance with whichever specific programming they may have. Some reprogramming of the unconscious based on ego patterns can be made directly simply by using common sense.

Something different is what I call the Creative Mind that channels flashes of light and genius and provides the conscious mind with the perfect answer at the perfect moment. Again, it is something that can happen to people who have looked for days, sometimes months, for an answer to some question, like scientists; all that previous work acts as an incubation, or sometimes –provided your mind is open to receiving- you receive directly the light of an original idea. One second before it wasn’t there, one second later you know it, and in the middle of both neither your intellect nor your experience have anything to do with the finding. Where did the idea come from? That’s the intelligence of the unconscious of the educated mind, it can capture it from some source.

The uneducated mind, full of noise and negative associations, which keeps repeating attitudes it defends –even indefensible ones- can hardly be receptive to the light of the Creative Mind of the Universe which tends to balance and cannot be received by an unbalanced mind with too many negative patterns.

An educated mind that reasons positively, that is used to change, to reflection and self-assessment, that looks for solutions, that can challenge itself, that can change its attitudes and use its will to turn into new realities and a new way of living the mental processes it has revised, that educated mind that enjoys learning constantly, is usually the happy recipient of that kind of information. And it is not chance, it is the result of personal work, original ideas must be deserved.

The study of dreams and projections and the subsequent reprogramming of negative patterns into positive ones, turn the uneducated mind into an educated mind that will be a much better recipient of those ideas that are typical of geniuses, original ideas coming from a source still to be “proved” by science, but that surely exists in some plane of conscience different from the physical one. Many scientists, including some Nobel Prizes, admit having received the answer to their research during a dream, or by means of an original idea that didn’t result from them, from their observations or from their direct reasoning. Our creative mind, made in the image of the Creative Mind of the Universe, tunes into it and receives its impulses only if it is clean of negative patterns, of fears and doubts, if it is in a relaxed, flowing and searching mode. That’s why it so important that each of us works on his/her own mind balancing it, it is our particular receiver of the Creative Mind of the whole Universe.

B.P.: Thank you, Beatriz, I would like you to give us a few clues as to how to incubate a dream, that is to say, an answer or light from the unconscious for our readers … and I would also like to learn to work with my dreams, is there anywhere you give your courses, some website where I can learn about your work?

B.C.: Incubating is simple. As I said before, it is asking your mind before you go to sleep what you need to know for tomorrow, for a project, or to solve anything in your life, to reach some target. Questions attract answers, both from dreams and from signs. Always ask about something you want to improve, to solve. Look for solutions to problems and immediately create a new project, look for help to advance it and your creative mind will get going. If you’re only looking for solutions you won’t stop creating problems. That’s why it is essential that you generate new and luminous projects and that you ask for help to carry them out and at the same time solve unresolved issues.

Visualize how you’ll remember a dream the next morning when you wake up, or how you’ll receive ideas during the day that will solve your problem. Try several times, at the beginning your creative mind may not respond because it is out of training, keep asking for an answer and when you receive it get it going, act accordingly in the real world. If you don’t move you won’t advance. It is a mistake to believe that only by working with your mind you will attract something in material life. The mind conducts, the body should follow it and ACT.

Your task is to train your mind to observe so it can receive the message and carry it out. Working on projections is too complex to talk about it in this interview, but I have gone in depth into it in my book “La Clave está en tus Sueños” (“The Clue is your Dreams”) published by Edaf. Every pattern you work on increases the silence in your mind and your capacity as recipient.

I have interrupted my classes for the time being because I’m constructing a website where I will include my whole system, from the interpretation and reprogramming of patterns to the creation of new projects and aims. The whole process. Meanwhile I am giving some clues, exercises and information about the opening in the near future of the website at my blog http://beatrizdelcastillo.wordpress.com/. At http://www.holistika.net/autotransformacioin.asp you will also find articles and interpretation of dreams that illustrate the process …

B.P.: It’s time to say good-bye now. Thank you very much, Beatriz, it has been a pleasure to talk to you … I hope we will soon have the opportunity to organize an unforgettable Friday with you so that our readers may get to know you and your work better … before that I will read your book that I guess is full of information and interest.

A brand new friend was asking me the other day: so you really believe that there’s no such thing as chance? A good question that calls for a close look at some of the Laws of the Universe.

For the past 12 years I’ve been teaching people to interpret their dreams, the signs in their everyday life, their patterns that keep repeating themselves, so I’ve had the opportunity to study hundreds, if not thousands of so-called chances.

My dictionary says that chance is “the occurrence of events without an obvious cause, planning or warning”, whereas causality is the “operation or relation of cause and effect”.

When we say that something has happened “by chance” we normally refer to a fortuitous event, something that has happened by accident. However, the way I see things, that is not possible in the Universe, where the Laws of “Cause and Effect” and of “Attraction”, together with “Synchronicity”, rule our transit through this planet. Unless we consider the interaction between these three elements,we will not understandwhy things happen the way they do.

Believing that everything happens by chance is not only boring, but inaccurate. I am more inclined to think -and it seems that science supports the idea- that there is an order in the Universe, that it holds a mystery and that our challenge is to learn how to interpret, study and control it, something like developing our capacity to be co-creators in a system which allows us to do so. It was not in vain that Jesus said that we were gods, or at least we have the potential, I doubt he was being light-hearted, it wasn’t his style.

What we call chance is nothing more than the conjunction at a same point and time of causes of equal nature or vibration that in accordance with the law of attraction produce effects that are often reciprocal. This is by no means a new idea, there’s a whole series of sayings that support it: “birds of a feather flock together”, “he who seeks, shall find”, “what goes around, comes around”, “he who sows, reaps” … they all refer to some cause, even if far-off, which finally materializes in an effect. Unless we look for the cause, the effects can seem a matter of chance, but that’s not what they are in most cases, they are the effect of a cause.

Chance can turn, and in fact turns, into the perfect excuse to elude the responsibility of being the cause of something we don’t like. By accepting chance we avoid having to work on and accept that there’s something we may have thought, felt or done that may have been the cause of that unwanted effect.

Sometimes common causes are generated, or by an individual or individuals, and others use them as their own particular cause, thus generating effects that in turn become different causes. If, for example, two people want to find love and they both use the same chatroom on the internet -which has been caused by others- they will end up finding each other. But from the beginning they both had the same intention, and that common intention led them to come across each other, their minds led them to make decisions depending on their objective. Sometimes the intention is not a common one, but each person finds in the other one precisely what he/she was looking for, what he/she needed in order to learn and to advance. What one of them offers is what the other was looking for, and vice versa. But it is always important to know how to interpret signs correctly.

It is also important to remember that causes generated by a person or a group of people may give place to collective effects which can be difficult to measure. And even then those effects will be experienced differently according to each individual.

The mind in searching mode is an infallible engine that drives the creative forces of the Universe. The aim or intention of such a search will determine its effect, which will not be the same (continuing with the previous example) if someone is looking for true love than if they don’t specify what kind of love they are looking for and they find a love that will reflect the love that they have for themselves. If they are incapable of loving themselves, they will find someone who will not know how to love them, and they will not understand why they attract that sort of person … but the cause was there. On the other hand, someone willing to learn will know how to look for someone with his own concerns and together they will learn to love each other … or not.

If someone is desperately searching for truth and they send out that wish to the Universe, the Universe –apparently by means of some so-called chance- will send back its truth which may have very little to do with what we had imagined, but it will always be the real one, the truth that supports itself in our unconscious. Our consciousness can have a certain image of ourselves, but it is our unconscious that has the real one and it is from our unconscious that we attract our physical manifestations. That is to say, we find our own cause reflected in the other person, even if the cause is an unconscious one, and in that mirror we can see ourselves and work on ourselves. It is what we call projection.

If one wishes to join the magical dance of synchronicity, where what we live internally and the events that take place outside us coincide, we must adopt a different pattern the one where we accept that it is the Universe that causes our reality. If we believe that the Universe guides us to our best, we will have to learn to read its instructions while working on the best intentions on our part. If we decide to take part and be co-creators with the Universe we will have to work with it instead of ignoring it. For example, it is not the same to pretend to take advantage of our planet in our own benefit, than to seek the planet’s wellbeing too, the mutual benefit . The Universe will help projects with that intention to come true.

Many “chances” support the pattern of “every wrong results in some good” (Literally in Spanish: “no hay mal que por bien no venga”. In English: “every cloud has a silver lining”.). But I suggest we consider an even better way of attracting good, and that is stating that “EVERY GOOD RESULTS IN ANOTHER GOOD”. Messages from the Universe never come suddenly, there are warnings, signs, clues which we should pay attention to. We can learn, decide, flow with our decisions, willingly allowing the Universe to guide us. If we trust in its goodness and infallibility we will arrive to a state of magical synchronicity that will guide us down the correct path: follow the clues that flow, let go of or reprogram what is blocked. When something doesn’t flow we must work more on it, look for different ways, check our intentions, make sure there aren’t any negative patterns working against us, look for information that will ratify our positive intention.

Advancing in this way implies paying attention to intuition, following the signs that show us the way. When we go over ideas in our head looking for the solution to some problem, we are avoiding a very useful help in difficult moments: intuition, that whispering and unerring inner voice that is always bound to calm emotions.

And finally, once we are in synchronicity, once we learn to flow with the Universe while shaping with our intentions our physical manifestations, it is important to understand that what the Universe supports is the soul’s evolution and that in order to support that we must train our ego to be at its service.

The Universe will not give us what our uneducated ego thinks we want, it will give us what we really need, what our soul demands to make us grow as individuals. Our job is to seek that growth through good and pleasant experiences, setting ourselves constructive challenges, following our true values and intuitions. But if we wish to grow, advance, develop and be happy and we don’t set ourselves challenges, then circumstances will oblige us to do so.

If what we have been sending out to the Universe are negative ideas and energies, we had better challenge ourselves, educate ourselves through our personal work instead of waiting for the Universe to give back to us –in accordance with the Law of Cause and Effect- all the negativity we have been dumping into it.

When we send out positive ideas and energies, the signs that we receive show us the path we must follow, helping us to navigate so we can overcome the duality, the causes and effects that have nothing to do with us, the turmoil of the strife between bad and good that exists in our system, reaching a flawless unity between our inner and our outer realities, the state of grace we call synchronicity that gives so much happiness to those who experience it.